Hoping To Fix College Teaching, CMU Open-Sources Trove of Software

Wednesday CMU announced the open sourcing of its adaptive-learning software platform -- plus analytics and dozens of other related tools for improving college teaching -- as part of a national push 'in an unusual move intended to shake up how college teaching is done around the world,' writes EdSurge.

Long-time Slashdot reader jyosim shares their report:
Officials estimate that developing the software has cost more than $100 million in foundation grants and university dollars. The goal of the software giveaway is to jump-start 'learning engineering,' the practice of applying findings from learning science to college classrooms. If it takes off, the effort could result in a free, open-source alternative to a growing number of commercial adaptive-learning and learning analytics tools aimed at colleges. One of the biggest concerns by college leaders about buying such tools from commercial vendors is whether colleges will have access to the underlying algorithmic logic -- or whether the systems will be a 'black box....'
'We need a scientific revolution in education akin to the one that we had in medicine 150 years ago,' said Michael Feldstein, coordinator of the Empirical Educator Project, in a statement. 'This isn't a silver bullet, and it isn't charity. It's an invitation to the educators of the world for us all to solve big problems together.'

CMU's Nobel prize-winning economics professor Herbert Simon once argued of colleges that 'we must step back and view them with Martian eyes, innocent of their history, to appreciate fully how outrageous their operation is... [W]e find no one with a professional knowledge of the laws of learning, or of the techniques of applying them.'

Kenneth R. Koedinger, a professor of human computer interaction and psychology at Carnegie Mellon, now argues that 'we need to change higher ed from a solo sport to a collaborative research activity.'

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